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Long years before Herndon had read to Lincoln one of Theodore Parker’s sermons, and after doing so made this shallow revivalistic observation ”I have always noticed that ill-gotten wealth does no man any good. This is as true of nations as of individuals. I believe that all the ill-gotten gain wrenched by us from the negro through his enslavement will eventually be taken from us, and we will be set back where we began. Lincoln thought my prophecy rather direful.” This Hebraic-Puritan idea took root in Lincoln’s mind; and so in his Second Inaugural he developed it into these demoniacal words:

“ The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”

Not Jonathan Edwards in his maddest Calvinism ever uttered words to equal those of Lincoln. They mean that slavery, which the New World did not want, had to pay for it in agony and blood, but the debt had to be paid by those who did not contract the debt. They mean that a just God willed this, and effected his will by a war which cost the country from 750,000 to 1,000,000 lives and 22,000,000,000 of money. If God was now willing the removal of slavery it was through men like Lincoln, who had given the North and the South this war, without any need for it at all, and who within a few weeks of the day of this Inaugural willed that the war should go on, and that the peace proposals of Stephens should come to nothing save upon terms of ignominious capitulation, without any promises or assurances of any sort as to the fate of the South. There are only two ways of interpreting these words of Lincoln: either one interprets them as a Christian and accepts what he said as true and just, because it is taken from the Bible; or else one has retained his reasoning faculties, and abhors them as the incredible outpouring of a mind at last completely fanaticized.

Lincoln the Man
Edgar Lee Masters
pp. 471-472

Masters, a poet and novelist, was not an historian. I have not read his works, nor has anyone ever suggested that they was worth reading.

My take on Lincoln's second inaugural address is quite different. Lincoln did not seek to place blame ("Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it persish, and war came.").

When Lincoln gave this address, the Civil War was still ongoing. Lee's surrender at Appomattox was still one month away. But the end was in sight. Lincoln was wondering aloud if the war was Divine retribution. (There can be no doubt that slavery was, and is, a thoroughly evil institution.) He noted that ".. both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been fully answered." Then he added, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this might scourge of war may speedily pass away." He did not say, "May God strike the slave-owners dead" or "God is on our side."

In fact, it is the last paragraph/sentence that provides an insight into Lincoln's fundamental humanity. It was a plea to both sides. It bears repeating:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lastings peace among ourselves and with all nations."

These are not the words of a shallow or demonic man. And these words will live on in history long after people have forgotten the work of hack authors such as Edgar Lee Masters.

Masters shows his unreliability in taking Herndon as an authoritative source. And his pulling Lincoln out of the 19th century context and taking him as one of a kind, rather than as part of a cultural pattern also reflects ignorance and malice.

Nineteenth century America was very religious and scriptural. The tendency was to think of crises and tragedies in terms of Providence. You can look at Eugene Genovese's "A Consuming Fire" for examples.

Naturally, a more skeptical generation would find these scriptural references offensive. All the more so if they agreed with the other side. And there was much opportunity in Masters's day to exploit the change in sensibility to skewer those one disagreed with. But points scored against the rhetorical style of the day, don't particularly reflect on Lincoln personally. One might just as well find Lee's or Davis's or Jackson's references to Providence or God or the deity blasphemous or sacrilegious as Lincoln's. All Masters shows in his attack on Lincoln is his own disagreement with that President. Those who see the primary blame for the war resting on other shoulders won't be convinced by Masters's own rhetorical excesses.